1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates, in general, to microwave ovens and, more particularly, to a microwave oven which is provided with a cover unit to open or close a front of a control panel.
2. Description of the Related Art
As is well known to those skilled in the art, a microwave oven is an appliance which cooks food using microwaves. The microwave oven cooks food by heating the interior of the food through a dielectric heating method. The microwave oven is provided with a cooking cavity into which food is laid, and a microwave heating device, known as a magnetron, which irradiates microwaves into the cooking cavity to cook the food.
A door is mounted to a front of the microwave oven to open or close the cooking cavity. The microwave oven also includes a machine room in which several electrical devices are installed. A control panel is mounted to a front of the machine room, and is provided with a plurality of control buttons to control the operation of the microwave oven, and a display to show the operating status of the microwave oven.
However, the conventional microwave oven has a problem in that the control buttons provided on the control panel are exposed to the outside, so the control buttons may become dirty due to dust in a room, and the microwave oven may be undesirably and carelessly operated by children. Further, the conventional microwave oven has another problem in that it is not frequently used even though power is constantly supplied to the microwave oven, so power consumption is unnecessarily high.